


when your soul embarks

by hanzios



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Established Relationship, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, I cried while writing this, I hate myself, I'm so sorry, M/M, Sad Ending, honestly why do i do this, mccreary doesn't unleash the bomb, set in season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27222085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanzios/pseuds/hanzios
Summary: Jackson kneels on the dirt, a bloodied hand holding his stomach. It doesn’t take Nate long before he’s running towards him with panicked worry, voices of people from behind him telling him to stay put drowned by his own fear.[AU where Jackson dies at the end of Season 5]
Relationships: Eric Jackson/Nathan Miller
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6





	when your soul embarks

**Author's Note:**

> i'm so so sorry for writing this. but the thought of one of them dying had so much angst potential, i kinda had to :((( trust me, this hurt for me to write. 
> 
> um.... enjoy??

There is a heavy silence that blankets the crowd, each one holding their breath as they await the orders of a child.

Bellamy stands in front of Madi, staring at her with pleading eyes after he finishes his speech. She’s looking up at him with the same intensity, pondering his words. The weight of this decision falls upon her, and her only.

Nate could only wait. His grip on his rifle tightens.

If it were up to him, these criminals would’ve already been dead. But it isn’t. Like always, he waits for his orders. Always the dutiful soldier.

Finally, Madi’s voice breaks the silence. “Arrest them. In the church.”

Nate could see Bellamy’s chest heave with relief as Wonkru warriors immediately do what they are told. It takes Nate a second while longer to catch the words and act on them. Eligius prisoners get taken to their feet, shoved and prodded into a singular line. Nate barks orders, making sure everything falls into place.

He doesn’t resent Madi’s choice, not really. And it’s not because it aligns with his own principles, but only because it aligns with Jackson’s. The doctor wouldn’t have wanted there to be any more blood shed in these beautiful green grounds; he’s made his thoughts clear before their army stormed in with their Heda for one final assault.

A while later, as they’re rounding up the last of the prisoners, Clarke returns with her own convicts, their necks collared.

Nate offers to wait for the others – for those who are still coming back from the desert.

For Jackson.

He remains planted on the border with a few other men, eyes on the forest beyond them as the others decide what to do next. _We won,_ Nate repeats in his head. For the first time in what feels like forever, he allows himself to breathe a little easier.

The war – the fighting – is finally over.

All he needs now is to hold Jackson in his arms. Find a bed fit for the two of them. And only then can he be at peace.

“Movement on the east border!” a Wonkru warrior yells.

Nate is taken out of his daydream, craning his neck to find familiar figures running towards their direction, carrying stretchers and the other gear they left behind. Even from afar, he could see Jackson at the far back, carrying bags of medical equipment.

“It’s them!” Nate yells. “Give ‘em a hand!”

The others follow. He can see his friends, safe and alive – a little bruised, but nevertheless okay. Nate greets them with a grin and a pat on the arm before jogging through the crowd to get to Jackson.

He’s a little behind, what with everything he’s carrying, but he spots Nate. The smile on his face blinds the warrior. Peace is within his grasp.

All of a sudden, a loud bang echoes through the woods, breaking Nate out of his trance. Out of reflex, he crouches to the ground, grabbing the gun from his hip.

“ _Everybody, get down!”_

Nate’s trained eyes scan the woods around them, looking for a figure hidden behind the trees and leaves. His eyes land on Jackson, and immediately, his heart drops.

Jackson kneels on the dirt, a bloodied hand holding his stomach. It doesn’t take Nate long before he’s running towards him with panicked worry, voices of people from behind him telling him to stay put drowned by his own fear.

“ _Jax!”_ When Nate reaches the doctor, he all but collapses into the warrior’s arms. Nate wraps his hands around Jackson, and accidentally touches a wet spot on his back. He pulls it to his face, feeling his mouth run dry.

_He’s bleeding too much._

The warrior is frozen on his tracks, feeling nothing but terror surround his body.

“Nate,” Jackson utters weakly, in pain. “P–Put pressure on m–my…”

Nate suddenly snaps out of his thoughts, and bitterly, he remembers Becca’s island. Oh, how far they’ve come. It doesn’t take him long to act. Jackson _needs_ him, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let him down. They’ve been through so much. He can’t die now.

The warrior lies Jackson on his back, both hands on the doctor’s abdomen, dark red blood oozing out of it. He could hear sounds of gunshots in the background, either from his own men or the enemy’s. Nate tries his best to cover Jackson’s body as he shakily ties a tourniquet on Jackson’s stomach.

“You’re gonna be okay, Jax,” he repeats in shuddered breaths. “You’re not gonna die. I won’t let that happen.” He looks at the love of his life with blurred vision. Jackson’s eyes are half-lidded, his face going pale with the loss of blood.

“I love you, Nate,” he says with a slight smile.

“ _No._ No, don’t say that yet, I–“

“We got him!” A voice says from behind.

Nate exhales, putting a bloody hand on Jackson’s face. “Stay awake for me. _Please_.”

Jackson could only nod feebly. With all of the strength he could muster, Nate picks Jackson up on his arms, carrying him bridal style. His shaky legs jog to the others with purpose, and he looks over to the people gathered in the boundary.

 _“Someone go get Abby!”_ he yells, his voice turning out strained.

They quickly get to the valley’s makeshift medical room, a distraught Abby meeting them at the door. Her face pales when she sees who’s in Nate’s arms.

“What happened?” she whimpers, gesturing Nate to set him down on an empty table.

“H–He got shot in the stomach,” he forces himself to say, hands still firm on Jackson’s arms. “I– He’s lost a lot of blood.”

Nate doesn’t notice Clarke, Bellamy, and Octavia enter the room. He doesn’t notice Kane in a similar condition one table over. He doesn’t notice Abby’s shaky, thin fingers grabbing her equipment.

He only looks at Jackson’s face, half-asleep and half-awake, treading the line between life and death.

Nate has never been more terrified in his life. Not when he’s surrounded by an army of Grounders in a piece of soil they’d just landed in weeks earlier. Not when he’s chained up into the cold cement wall, waiting to be the next piece of meat to be extracted of his bone marrow. Not when he’s fighting a battalion of brainwashed strangers and friends. Not when he’s cold inside a bunker, waking up and being told that his father had died.

Because nothing – not Grounders, not guns, _not even death itself_ – frightens Nathan Miller more than losing the love of his life.

“Miller…” There’s a small hand on his back. He hadn’t realized he’d been crying until he feels the wetness of his own cheeks. “Miller, you can wait outsi–“

“ _I am_ not _leaving his side_.” Nate snaps his head to Clarke, all of his frustrations unleashing onto her through the venom in his voice. “Now _go save him._ ”

She doesn’t protest any further.

Nate is true to his word. His hand is wrapped tight against Jackson’s, the other stroking the man’s short hair. He leans close to his face as Abby and Clarke work, whispering soft nothings into his ear. He knows Jackson won’t hear them – he’d been sedated – but it helps Nate go through it.

He tells him stories of their time on the bunker. Tells him of memories they’d made together for six years. Tells him how much he wants to add six more years of memories on top of them. And six more. And six more. Until they’re old and grey. Here in Shadow Valley.

_Together._

It feels like he’s been talking for eternity, trapped in that position, when the beeping of a monitor takes him back to reality. Nate’s eyes shoot up into the screen beside Jackson. And he’s not a medical expert, but he’d seen enough death in his life to notice the severity of a flattening green line on the monitor.

Around him, Abby and Clark scramble to help Jackson fight for his life. Nate releases his grip on the man’s hand, unable to take his eyes off of the screen as the entire world collapses around him. All he can hear is that _fucking_ beeping noise, echoing in his ears.

“Clear _.”_ A pulse of electric shock meets Jackson’s bare chest.

The line doesn’t change.

“ _Again.”_ There is a desperation in Abby’s voice. “Clear.”

Clarke pushes the defibrillator into Jackson’s chest again.

There is static in Nate’s ears, and the world stops.

No. _No._

His eyes are glassy with tears, and from the monitor, Nate turns to Jackson’s face.

_No, no, no._

He feels a hand touch his arm. “Miller, _I’m so sorry._ ”

Nate feels himself float closer to the table, closer to Jackson. (He’d always felt a magnetic pull drawing him closer to him ever since the day they met.) His hand falls to Jackson’s lifeless hand, tangling their fingers together.

He could hear Abby whispering to Jackson on the opposite side of the table.

_In peace, may you leave the shore._

This isn’t real. This couldn’t be real.

_In love, may you find the next._

Jackson’s not dead. He _isn’t._ He _couldn’t be._

_Safe passage on your travels…_

Nate tries to remember Jackson’s smile, his touch, his brown eyes, his warmth. He closes his eyes as he swallows a large lump on his throat.

_Until our final journey to the ground._

He leans close to Jackson’s face, touching their foreheads together as his hand caresses his partner’s cold cheek. _Please, Jax. Please, wake up._

“May we meet again,” Abby punctuates, breath trembling.

Nate feels his tears escape out of his eyes with such intensity he’s never felt before, droplets falling into Jackson’s face. His grip on his lover tightens, as he breathes into his unresponsive mouth,

“ _May we meet again._ ”

+

They bury him the following day.

True to his word, Nate doesn’t leave Jackson’s side. Even after they’d covered up his body in a thin white sheet, he still doesn’t feel as if this is all real. He muses that this must just be some sick dream that he’ll eventually snap out of. And when he wakes up, Jackson will be there, as he always is.

He will tell Jackson that he had this terrible nightmare, that he felt like he himself was dying. And Jackson will hold him in his arms, rubbing small circles down Nate’s back.

As he always does.

But finally, when Nate wakes up from crying himself to sleep, his head is resting on the cold metal table beside Jackson’s cold body, holding his cold hand. Everything about him is cold.

Nate slowly rises to his feet, just then noticing the dry blood soaking his hands.

_Jackson’s blood._

With stinging eyes, he walks to a nearby sink to clean his fingers.

After, he stays beside Jackson until he’s summoned for the funeral.

The burial is anything but small. They choose an empty site a few ways outside of the main grounds for their burial space. Nate expected there to only be their close friends attending the ceremony, but he was surprised to see almost everybody standing in a crowd at the funeral.

It made him realize how valuable and full Jackson’s life had been.

Each and every person in that funeral had been treated and healed by Jackson, one way or another. On the bunker, or on every war they’d fought. Part of Nate wishes it would’ve been him that died instead. Without hesitation, he would’ve given his life for Jackson if he’d been given the chance.

He pulls himself out of his own thoughts to focus on Abby’s words instead.

“He is– _was_ a good man,” she says. The usage of past tense makes Nate want to run away and never come back. “He’d been by my side since the Ark. Since he was a teenager who just lost his mother. He was the closest thing I had to a son.” She smiles fondly at his memory.

“Jackson had wanted nothing more than to help other people. And he did. He did that and more.” Abby turns to the freshly plotted ground that housed Jackson’s b–

Nate swallows. He couldn’t even think it.

“Thank you, Eric,” she says. So soft, Nate could barely hear it. “Thank you for everything.”

When she’s finished, she walks towards Nate. He couldn’t look up at her, his hard eyes fixated on the soil beneath his boots. Abby wraps her arms around him, and he could only hug her back. When they pull away, she looks up into his eyes.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk.”

Nate clenches his jaw, ignoring the burning on his throat. “I’m fine. I can do this for him.”

He drags his feet along the dirt, making his way beside Jackson’s burial spot. Nate couldn’t look up at the crowd, his eyes fixating on the ground, trying not to think about Jackson being six feet under it.

“I, uh…” Nate stutters. “Two days after Praimfaya, I promised him I’d take care of him. We had barely been together then, but I… I just felt like I had to _promise_ his something, you know?” He smiles briefly. “It’s not that hard to get attached to him, after all.”

There is a stinging in his eyes when he says, “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep my promise, Jax.”

He rubs a hand over the back of his neck, swallowing back the oncoming tears. “I always said I’d take care of him. That I’d protect him. From the pits, from all the fights, from the rest of the fucking world. I always said that.

“But all along… he’d been the one taking care of me. Frankly, I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for him,” Nate says pensively. “I’d have probably gotten myself killed in the bunker, by a knife or by grief. Whenever I was feeling down, _he_ was there, and he always _knew,_ because that’s who Jackson is.”

Nate lets out a trembling breath, and he finally realizes he’d been crying. “Fuck; _was._ ” He wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. _“Fuck.”_

He drops to his knees and buries a hand deep into the freshly plowed dirt. Nate closes his eyes and imagines he’s holding Jackson.

“I love you, Jax. We _will_ meet again.”

The crowd thins out a few minutes after the service. Yet, Nate is firm on his position, sitting on the ground six feet above the love of his life. He doesn’t think about the worms that may one day claim his lover’s body, or the fact that weeks from now Jackson will be nothing but bones.

Nate sits there, with Jackson – as he’d promised – until the last of his friends leave.

Until the sun begins to set on the horizon of this valley.

He couldn’t bear to think of this place as beautiful anymore.

Nor is it home.

Because for six years, he already _had_ a home. But now his home is gone. 

Nate leans back until he’s pressed against the dirt. His eyes drift shut, and for a moment, he imagines Jackson on top of him. His pretty face and his soft touch are still fresh in his memory, rough fingers tracing along Nate’s face, full lips placing gentle kisses on the warrior’s many bruises.

Finally, he thinks, _I’m home._

Even if from now on, home exists only in his memory.


End file.
